Thursday, December 29, 2016

Luke 22:26-27 -- On Service and Greatness

"But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.
For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth."
Luke 22:26-27

Christ's teachings turn many of the things that we learn from our society on their heads. We often compare or compete, trying to determine what our "score" is in life. Are we ahead, are we behind... and exactly what are the rules? It can be confusing and contradictory, depending on who we look to for the answers to those questions. I really like God's answer here. He tells us to let go of that whole way of thinking, and stop trying to be better than each other. He asks us to follow his example in this as in other things... to serve others rather than trying to seek power.

I also like that God's idea of greatness includes submissiveness and humility. Those are things that are often very hard for us to learn, but which are absolutely necessary before we can build important relationships and before we can accept God fully into our lives, since we can't do that if we are always fighting him for primacy. Today, let's follow Christ's example, and work on letting go of our need to be right, and instead focus on love, service, and other aspects of God's will.

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The scriptural commentary presented here is based on books of scripture recognized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, so you'll see scriptures from several books like the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, etc.

This collection started in 1999 as the Scripture of the Day email list (before there was a blog). The search on this page doesn't always work for the older scriptures, but you can still get to them in the archive. I am in the process of adding all the older content.